On 1 Aug 2008, at 21:18, DrMajorBob wrote:
> In light of all that, in what way have the rest of us failed to
> understand "a bit of mathematics"?
Te bit of mathematics (and computer algebra) you clearly do not
understand is the very basic fact when you solve many kinds of
algebraic equations with symbolic parameters you inevitably introduce
parasite solutions. When you use numeric parameters Solve can verify
which of theses are correct. The rest of the discussion is totally
besides the point, and so is using Reduce (for example, because one
can easily come up with equations that Reduce will not manage).
The example was meant to illustrate the very trivial and elementary
fact that the world is full of functions with parameters that can be
evaluated pointwise (once numeric parameters have been substituted)
but cannot be evaluated by Evaluate. This is so basic and there are so
many examples of it that I do not see any point in discussion this
farther.
Andrzej Kozlowski